Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-162)
CHIEF CONSTABLE
PAUL KERNAGHAN
CBE QPM, SUPERINTENDENT MIKE
FLYNN, MR
MICHEL QUILLE,
MR BILL
HUGHES AND
MR ROB
WAINWRIGHT
9 JANUARY 2007
Q160 Chairman: It is a political
issue but as police officers, and Mr Kernaghan you might have
a view on this, do you feel that you have a sufficient ear in
the Commission when they are taking forward their proposals for
legislation that you would be able to say as practical police
officers, "You are going too fast, perhaps for broad and
political objectives you need to slow this down and do it properly"?
Chief Constable Kernaghan: Availability,
on this I am off the pace, will always be subject to the overriding
principle of need to know. We will gladly provide hard factual
information which will be easily accessible. "Have you got
a criminal record?" should be available throughout the EU,
but if we are talking about sensitive material, we will always
apply the need to know so I think that is the pragmatic professional
approach. Do we have appropriate representation in Brussels? That
is perhaps for others to comment on but, Chairman, you raised
the police co-operation working group or Mr Hughes did. That is
a Home Office Civil Service representation, there is not a professional
police representation there as of right. I think you can always
improve the pragmatic, the practitioners, members of Bill's staff
and Mike Flynn represents me at various meetings. I think perhaps
there is a case for a stronger professional input to European
deliberations but, as I say, on availability, subject to need
to know principle, I do not have concerns about it.
Q161 Chairman: Mr Quille, you operate
what you describe as a rigid data protection and confidentiality
regime with the information that you bring together at the moment.
Will those same standards be maintained as the principle of availability
comes into force or do you have any concerns about the proper
handling of data that is shared across the Union?
Mr Quille: If I refer to the Europol
data protection system, we have a very high standard. We deal
with sensitive information about organised crime so we can use
all data protection systems, so it is high on that. If I can come
back, we have the highest standard of data protection. The question,
in the same way as mentioned in my previous intervention, is to
be sure that in some Member States data protection standards will
be in place but we have to check. We have in Europol a joint supervisory
body composed of Member States of national data protection systems.
We will check, if I can say, case by case. For you, Paul, I have
no concern but we have to be very careful.
Q162 Chairman: Just to pursue this
point, as I understand availability much more data will flow from
Member State to Member State without going through Europol or
some other agency and the test would be that it would be accessed
on the same basis as the national law enforcement agency. If I
understand it rightly, for example, a police officer in Hampshire
who is investigating a rape would be able to gain access to the
national DNA database. If I understand the principle of availability
a police officer in any other European Union state investigating
a rape would also be able to have access to the UK national DNA
database on the same terms because they are investigating a crime.
What I am trying to establish is are we sure that we will not
put that access into place before we are convinced that each country
will use that data as properly and securely as I would be sure
that a Hampshire police officer would do?
Chief Constable Kernaghan: Basically,
people cannot go into a room and trawl through the DNA database
to pass an idle hour et cetera. You have a sample, you
put it against the database, which is independently managed in
the UK, it is not a police serviced database and they say "hit"
or "no hit". You give a very good example. If you have
a large vehicle driver moving around the European Community committing
offences in different countries, it is incredibly important that
we might be able to identify a sample from a victim with a sample
of a suspect elsewhere in the European Union so the DNA would
be good. It is not something we just trawl, it has got to be you
put a sample in and you get told "yes" or "no".
Chairman: Thank you. Can I thank you
very much indeed, gentlemen. That has been a very, very helpful
session. It has been good to hear from people who are dealing
with the problems on the ground so thank you very much.
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